Samuel Bamidele Aro has filed a lawsuit against the APC and INEC over the Kogi West senatorial ticket.
Let the record speak.
Aro withdrew his candidacy in writing before the May 18, 2026 primary. He did not contest. His name was not mentioned in the returning officer’s official declaration. He polled 620 residual votes from uninformed party members in a primary he had publicly abandoned. The APC National Working Committee reviewed the full appeal process and officially designated him as Former and Distinguished Senator Sunday Steve Karimi as Present on the signed candidates document. The National Chairman’s signature authenticates that determination. INEC uploaded Senator Karimi’s name to the official portal. The party’s nomination process has been concluded, and INEC has acknowledged the candidate submitted by the APC.
A man who withdrew before the race, never contested, and whose name was fraudulently inserted into a primary result by corrupt committee members is now asking a court to legitimise what fraud could not deliver and what the NWC has constitutionally corrected. He did not lose the party process. He was never part of it. The party process simply restored the authentic outcome that his backers attempted to steal.
This lawsuit is not a legal argument. It is a political last resort funded by the same machinery that deployed forged results, hotel room press conferences, Abuja lobby delegations, and dollar pressure campaigns against a Senator with 51,665 certified votes.
Every legitimate avenue has been exhausted. The court is the final desperate attempt to achieve through judicial delay what institutional integrity consistently refused to deliver.
The filing of a lawsuit does not alter the fact that the APC completed its internal nomination process and that INEC acknowledged the candidate submitted by the party. We remain confident that the court will determine the issues based on the law and the evidence presented.
The APC Kogi Conscience Group calls on the APC National Working Committee to take immediate and decisive action. Yahaya Bello is from Okene, Kogi Central. He has no electoral, constitutional, or democratic standing in Kogi West. The people of Kogi West made their choice freely and overwhelmingly on May 18, 2026. That choice produced 51,665 certified votes for Distinguished Senator Sunday Steve Karimi. The NWC upheld it. INEC confirmed it.
A former governor from Kogi Central funding a lawsuit to remove a sitting Senator from Kogi West is not party politics. It is the continuation of a personal agenda that has already destabilised Kogi East through imposition, attempted to destabilise Kogi West through forgery, and is now seeking to destabilise the entire APC structure through litigation.
The APC national leadership must call Yahaya Bello to order immediately. His continued meddling in Kogi West’s senatorial ticket is an affront to the democratic will of a people who have spoken clearly, an embarrassment to the party’s institutional integrity, and a direct threat to the APC’s 2027 electoral performance in a state it cannot afford to lose.
Distinguished Senator Sunday Steve Karimi’s legal team is fully prepared. The evidentiary foundation of his mandate is the strongest in Kogi State’s electoral history.
Kogi West has chosen.
The APC National Working Committee has confirmed.
INEC has acknowledged the party’s candidate.
The mandate stands.
No lawsuit filed by a Kogi Central man changes what the people of Kogi West decided.
The certificate stands. The mandate holds.
– Adams Yusuf
For: APC Kogi Conscience Group
Lokoja, Kogi State.
